"Pre-salt has produced 250 million barrels", says Petrobras manager at OTC Brasil

Cumulative production in the pre-salt has already reached 250 million barrels of oil equivalent (oil and gas) since production started in the Campos Basin pre-salt layer in 2008. The information was presented today (Oct 30) by Petrobras' Executive Manager for Pre-salt Exploration and Production, Carlos Tadeu Fraga, during a panel session on the pre-salt at the Offshore Technology Conference (OTCBrasil 2013) in Rio de Janeiro. Current production of 329,000 barrels per day (bpd) from the pre-salt, achieved in September 2013, is already eight times higher than the average pre-salt production in 2010, when 42,000 bpd were produced.

"The pre-salt has already produced 250 million barrels of oil equivalent, more than total accumulated production of the Garoupa field, first discovered by Petrobras in the Campos Basin in 1974 and what has been produced to date", the manager said.

The Executive also compared the volume already discovered in the pre-salt Santos Basin with other major offshore discoveries made in recent years around the world. According to him, the recoverable volume already stated in the Lula and Sapinhoá fields plus the contracted volume in the Transfer of Rights is about 15.4 billion barrels of oil equivalent, which equates to one and a half times the recoverable volume in the giant Kashagan field in the Caspian Sea, and 15 times the recoverable volume in the Thunder Horse field in the U.S. The pre-salt province as a whole, including the Santos Basin and the Campos Basin, is 149,000 square kilometers and is equivalent to three times the size of the state of Rio de Janeiro. As for the pre-salt under contract in the Santos Basin, approximately 15,000 square kilometers, equivalent to 650 exploration blocks and the production portion of the U.S. Gulf of Mexico.

Since its discovery in 2006 until December 2012, thirty-seven exploratory wells have been drilled in the pre-salt Santos Basin with a success rates exceeding 90%. Considering the entire pre-salt province, the success rate exceeds 80% and the number of wells reached 80 by 2012. "These numbers are fantastic", said Carlos Tadeu.

Currently, six platforms are in production in the pre-salt Campos Basin and three in the Santos Basin, as well as two roving platforms that are used for extended well tests. The first platform to produce oil in the pre-salt was the P-34 in Baleia Jubarte field, Campos Basin in 2008. The first definitive system to come on stream in the pre-salt hub in the Santos Basin was the Lula Pilot, through the FPSO Cidade de Angra dos Reis, which currently produces about 100,000 barrels per day.